THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 3, 1995 TAG: 9508030002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 40 lines
The jury gave Susan Smith ``life'' in prison for taking the lives of her two children. Having to live with what she did, her attorney argued, would be more severe punishment than dying because of it.
Let's hope so.
His point is arguable, but we won't argue it in this case. What spares this mother the death penalty for even this unthinkable crime are the absence of meanness exhibited by other murderers and the presence of remorse they lacked: Willie Turner, executed recently, killed a Franklin jeweler he had robbed just because he could, and just took a notion to. The Winchester couple now before the courts for starving and beating her daughter to death - they, too, are in a different league of either madness or malice.
Every step Susan Smith took had its logic, but it was the logic of a woman too desperate to think clearly, or to think her act through.
The defense made much of the miserable life that led her to such desperation. But if the number of mothers who kill their children from desperation are too many, the number of desperate mothers who don't kill their children are legion. Susan Smith killed. She killed two children who were not only helpless to resist but relied on her. That deserves at least life in prison, but South Carolina law provides no such thing - yet. Susan Smith will be eligible for parole in 30 years; by then the horror of her crime may have dimmed.
The people of Union wanted justice, and they wanted closure. Hope that South Carolinians recall the horror of her crime as well as their need for both justice and closure 30 years hence, and keep Susan Smith behind bars as long as she lives. by CNB